The Night Tiger(20)
* * *
In his office, William is out of sorts. He pulls out the letter he started that morning.
Dear Iris,
I’ve inherited a new Chinese houseboy. His name is Ren and I’d put his age at ten if not for the assurance that he’s almost thirteen. He comes to me from poor MacFarlane. Hard to believe he’s gone—I still remember when we went to Korinchi to look for tiger-men, harimau jadian, as the natives call them.
Malaya, with its mix of Malays, Chinese, and Indians, is full of spirits: a looking-glass world governed by unsettling rules. The European werewolf is a man who, when the moon is full, turns his skin inside out and becomes a beast. He then leaves the village and goes into the forest to kill. But for the natives here, the weretiger is not a man, but a beast who, when he chooses, puts on a human skin and comes from the jungle into the village to prey on humans. It’s almost exactly the reverse situation, and in some ways more disturbing.
There’s a rumor that when we colonials came to this part of the world, the natives considered us beast-men as well, though nobody has said that to my face.
William scratches the bridge of his nose.
Of all the things MacFarlane has presented me with over the years, this houseboy has to be one of the strangest. After all, a boy isn’t a pet or an animal. He seems grateful for the work and has tidied my study obsessively, opening every cupboard—
A knock on the door. Time to make the rounds at the wards and afterwards there’s an incisional hernia surgery.
* * *
Later that afternoon, William returns to find a surprise visitor waiting in his office. She sits on the edge of his desk swinging a sandaled foot. William is moderately acquainted with Lydia Thomson, the daughter of a rubber planter, although he has the feeling she’d like to change that.
The papers on his desk are disarranged, whether through her choice of seating, or because she’s been looking through them. William, tired from hours of standing in surgery, has difficulty adjusting his expression from irritated to pleasantly neutral.
“What can I do for you, Lydia?” he says, pulling out a chair for her.
They’re on first-name terms, as almost all the foreigners in this little town are. Batu Gajah—no, the whole of colonial Malaya—is full of Europeans who’ve fled half a world away for some personal reason or other. Many are lonely; Lydia is clearly one of them. Gossip says she’s here to find a husband. She isn’t too old, perhaps twenty-five or -six, though she’s entering the dangerous years. Still, she’s one of the local belles, volunteering often at the hospital
“You forgot your notes from the panel,” she says.
They’re both on a local committee to combat beriberi, that elusive disease that sickens Chinese laborers in the tin mines, swelling their limbs and causing heart congestion, though less prevalent, as Lydia pointed out, among Malay or Tamil workers. She’s been passionate about educating them, trying to get them to eat less white rice. “It’s lack of vitamin B that causes it,” she explained earnestly at their last meeting. William, gazing at the stoic faces of the locals, wondered whether Lydia understands how much white rice is a status symbol. Afterwards, an older Chinese man had nodded at him and said, “Your wife cares a lot.”
“She’s not my wife,” William said, smiling.
“Then you should make her yours. A good woman like that.”
It’s a common misconception, given that they’ve been thrown together recently. He’s squired Lydia to a charity auction. Driven her home after a couple of dinners, though he should be careful not to flirt too much with Lydia. It’s his weakness; old habits die hard. Now, looking at her in his office, William wonders what Iris would think of all this.
“I don’t need the notes.” He’s been too familiar with her, he realizes belatedly.
“Oh, it was no trouble at all! I’d stopped by to pick up my father’s medicine,” she says.
“And how is he?”
“Much better, thanks to you.”
William is too conscientious not to explain to Lydia that the routine gallbladder operation he performed on her father would likely have turned out well under any circumstances, but she keeps smiling at him no matter what he says. The cleaning lady appears with two teacups on a tray, a digestive biscuit tucked into each saucer. Suppressing a sigh, William hands Lydia a cup.
“Were you very busy today?” she says brightly.
“Not really. Though I’ve been presented with a mystery.”
“What is it?”
“Apparently a patient came to my house this morning and received medical treatment from an orderly. Though I haven’t got an orderly at home.”
“Oh.” Lydia frowns.
William was surprised to see the young woman, an attractive Sinhalese girl, on his afternoon rounds at the hospital. She explained in a mixture of halting Malay and English that she’d been taken to his house for treatment that morning. No, she couldn’t remember who it was, as she’d fainted. Someone in a white uniform. Her uncle, who’d brought her in, would know, though he’d already gone home. William examined the wound, resulting from a heavy iron cangkul, or hoe, that had slipped and cut the back of her calf. It was deep and must have bled a lot. She could have died if it hadn’t been stanched.